The Movies:

Vampire's Kiss:

The first feature follows a man named Peter Loew (Nicholas Cage), a materialist type who makes quite a nice living for himself working as an executive at a publishing company. Peter's got issues of his own though, and it's for that reason that he's visiting with his psychiatrist, Doctor Glaser (Elizabeth Ashley) on what must seem to her like a constant basis. He's also a swinging single guy, so when he's not at work or at his shrink's he's taking advantage of New York City's nightlife, cruising the bars looking to pick up.

It's on one of these adventures that Peter winds up taking a girl named Jackie (Kasi Lemmons) back to his apartment and just as things are starting to get hot and heavy, a bat comes out of nowhere and puts an end to things. When Peter mentions this to Glaser at his next session, he has to admit that this strange event excited him. Later on, Peter takes another girl home, this time it's Rachel (Jennifer Beals) and when they start making out, she bites his neck and draws blood. From here, it seems that Peter is slowly but surely turning into a vampire himself. Rachel admits to him that she was the bat that interrupted his encounter with Jackie that night, and he's definitely into what she has to offer. He becomes more ghoulish in appearance, his skin getting paler and his hair looking all raggedy, and his co-workers can't help but notice the change in him. Is Peter really turning into one of the children of the night or is it all in his head?

Vampire's Kiss may not be the greatest comedy ever written but it is a fun movie that holds up fairly well thanks primarily to Nicholas Cage's unhinged performance. This is a movie that lets the actor play to his strong points, allowing him to use those insane facial expressions he's capable of and that wild body language that has become a trademark of his style to create a memorable character out of Peter. The easiest (and most accurate) point of comparison for what Cage does here is Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. The characters share a lot of similarities: they're yuppie type, they're womanizers, they're materialists and they have an arrogance about them that many find off putting. Peter really embodies this arrogance in the way that he deals with his subordinates at work, terrorizing them at times and really going the extra mile to be a horrible person to work for. He harasses one of his employees, Alva (Maria Conchita Alonzo), to ridiculous degrees, though as the story evolves this subplot takes on more meaning and provides the movie with more than just a reason to laugh at the man's penchant for cruelty.

The movie starts off reasonably seriously, establishing the character and then, once he's been ‘bitten' and the vampiric angle of the story is established, it takes some twists and turns into some decidedly comedic territory, dark as much of that comedy may be. The supporting roles are good. Maria Conchita Alonzo is quite sympathetic and does well with the material while the underused Jennifer Beal brings the requisite amount of sex appeal necessary for her character to work to the film. Elizabeth Ashley is well cast as the shrink. Robert Bierman's direction is solid and the story remains engaging and interesting, but it's really Cage's work here that you'll walk away remembering.

High Spirits:

Neil Jordan's 1988 comedy High Spirits takes place around an Irish castle owned by one Peter Plunkett (Peter O'Toole), at least for now. The place is about to be repossessed but he's not going to let the old place go without a fight. In fact, he comes up with a great idea: lure in American tourists by remarketing the place as a haunted castle. Once those tourists start flocking to the place, his money troubles will be over and he and his wife (Liz Smith) will be able to get on with their lives.

Soon enough, those American tourists arrive by the bus load. Peter, who likes his drink, has got his staff all ready to go, they're prepared to put on the ghostly spectacle the guests are going to hop to see and they're all in on it. But what they don't realize is that there are some actual ghosts going along for the ride. Complicating matters further is the presence of one specific couple, Jack (Steve Guttenberg) and Sharon (Beverly D'Angelo) Crawford. See, Sharon's father is the man who put out the mortgage on Plunkett's castle and she figures this is all just a ploy by Peter to get her father off of his tracks. She's there to prove he's the fraud that she thinks he is, but Jack isn't so sure this is all fake after meeting a female ghost named Mary (Daryl Hannah).

Also featuring supporting roles from the beautiful Jennifer Tilly, Liam Neeson and Connie Booth, High Spirits gets by more on the merits of its cast than anything else. Peter O'Toole is perfectly cast here, cruising through the film in the type of comedic role that he has always excelled at, while Steve Guttenberg plays the goofy emasculated husband well, walked over by the ‘bitch' of a wife, played to a T by the beautiful Beverly D'Angelo. They all seem to be having a good time with the movie, getting into their roles quite a bit and tackling everything that the script throws at them with ease. As such, the movie has an enjoyable tone to it.

This is might to be enjoyable, goofy fun and on that level it works well. Some of the jokes are corny and predictable and the ‘haunted' side of the movie is played for laughs, not scares, but there's plenty of entertainment value to be had here if you're in the right frame of mind for it. The castle setting works well and the camerawork is quite nice. There are plot holes here and there and logic gaps to deal with but toss those aside and enjoy this as the light entertainment it's meant to be. It's all very silly, at times borderline dumb, but when it entertains as nicely as this one does that's not a problem.

Both films debut on Blu-ray framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in AVC encoded 1080p high definition and they look quite good. Each movie features nice color reproduction and good black levels. Neither film shows any obvious noise reduction or edge enhancement having been applied, and there doesn't appear to be any serious issues with compression artifacts. Elements used were pretty clean, meaning you aren't going to see any major print damage on either film, just a few specks here and there. Skin tones look nice in both pictures and generally both films look very good here.